Friday, March 1, 2013

A new Bible series

Survivor creator Mark Burnett is making a series based on the Bible for the History Channel, and he explains in this video and this one. (Both these videos are from ABC News, so I was unsurprised to find that the History Channel is a joint venture between the Hearst Corporation and, yes, Disney-ABC.) In one of the videos, Burnett states, "The Bible is the foundation of this country," (oddly, given that he's British) and when asked if he sees the Bible as literally true, answers, "There's only one way to approach this. You have to take the Bible as a fact." Frankly, he seems more excited about the "epic CGI" than the stories themselves. But I'm nevertheless pained to see the History Channel showing Bible stories based on the premise that "you have to take the Bible as a fact." Uh... actually, you don't, and no real historian would.

I was amused to note that in the comments to one of these videos, someone commented, apparently without irony, "So glad to see The Bible as the Topic instead of sex and violence." Evidently this person hasn't read the Bible enough to know that it's full of sex and violence!